Fulfilling a Fantasy
by fanofdenial
Summary: Draco Malfoy comes home to an unpleasant surprise. Will he and his wife Hermione be able to move past it? Written for the Hogwarts Houses Challenge OTP competition. Rated T to be safe.


**Credit to JK Rowling!**

One hand wound around her waist as the other tangled in her wild mane of curls. She moaned into his mouth, which only heightened his passion and the heat of the moment. His lips moved against hers as he spoke.

"Mmm I love you so much. So damn much..." Draco Malfoy jerked out of the half daze he had been in. Cheeks flaming red, he quickly took a furtive look around to make sure that none of the other Healers had heard him mumbling the end of his daydream. There he went again. That had been the third time that day that he had gotten lost in a daydream about his wife. He needed to learn to be more discrete! That and he needed to make tonight special. He wanted to have a romantic evening with the woman he adored above all others. Not only did he love his wife for her personality traits and her endearing mannerisms, but she constantly took his breath away, when he thought about how she, and she alone, had seen through the mask he had had to fashion during the war. She had recognised that somewhere inside, he possessed a goodness that he had had to hide away to survive his death-eater family and the Dark Lord's reign. It hadn't been easy to let go of his mask, both literal and figurative, after the war, but thanks to Hermione, he had finally discovered something, or rather someone, who was truly worth fighting for, and from that, their love had bloomed.

A couple of hours later; an eternity in Draco's mind; he was finally able to go home. Whistling as he walked up the brick pathway to the door of their little one-story white house, Draco thought about all of the good times he and Hermione had shared in this little building. Draco had lost a lot of the family fortune when his parents had been sent to Azkaban with a one-way ticket, and what he had had left, he and Hermione had agreed to spend on travel and on land rather than on a great mansion. Instead they had a lovely little house that lay on a vast property with sprawling fields that were wonderful for picnics and gardening, a lake for swimming and fishing, and plenty of uninhabited area for Draco to fly uninhibited and unnoticed by any muggles.

By this point, his musings had brought him into the front entry way, and as was usual, Draco called out a greeting.

"Hello Love! I'm home!" The sound of rustling greeted his announcement, causing Draco to grin. She often ran down eagerly to greet him, sometimes resulting in a passionate make-out session right then and there in the hall. After pausing to give her time to come down which she did not do, Draco proceeded down the hall to the kitchen, not at all dissuaded, thinking that she might have decided to begin making dinner as a treat even though it was his night to cook. When he saw that she wasn't there either, his grin got wider than ever because that meant that she had to be in the bedroom, which could mean only one thing. Still the rustling continued. Maybe she was putting on one of his favourite outfits. Marching down the hall, he flung open the door to their bedroom all the while saying,

"All right I'm here, and I've been waiting for this all day, I missed you so much..." He trailed off in shock as he observed the scene before him.

Ron Weasley was in his bedroom. Hermione was over by the bedroom bookshelf (one of a dozen that were crammed into various areas in their small house) holding a stack of books, clearly attempting to make it seem as though the scene that greeted him was one of innocent friendship; that she had taken him into their bedroom in order to lend him some books. They might have gotten away with it too, if it weren't Ron Weasley.

Draco had tried to let his many prejudices go, as part of his redemption process, but prejudice or not, there simply was no denying the fact that the man was a dunderhead. Draco was absolutely positive that he would never have willingly borrowed a book, let alone a stack of them. Draco couldn't help spitefully questioning whether or not the other man could even read. Then there was the fact that, unlike Hermione, Ron hadn't been able to slip back into his clothes and was standing shirtless with his pants unzipped. (Draco thanked Merlin that he'd at least managed to put his underwear back on.)

Hermione felt as though her stomach had plummeted to her feet when she saw from Draco's expression that he had put two and two together. Only then did she realise what a mistake she had made. She waited apprehensively for him to shout, stamp his feet, or to hex Ron into the next century, but what he actually did was worse.

"Hermione?" He asked tentatively as though not believing his eyes. And then worse still, "Darling?"

Not breaking eye contact with her husband, Hermione spoke. "I think you should go now Ron." For once, Ron did not question her. He promptly disapparated after fishing his wand out of his pocket, all the while privately thanking Merlin that it had not wound up somewhere incriminating or difficult to get.

His departure left Draco and Hermione very much alone. For the first time in her life, Hermione Granger didn't know what to say. However, she was Hermione Granger after all, so that didn't stop her from talking. Nervously, she began to babble.

"Draco I don't know what came over me. I swear it was just this one time and it's just that lately I've—"

"Don't—" Draco cut her off, and she flinched at the raw emotion in his voice. "—try to justify it." Taking a deep breath, he continued in a shockingly calm voice, though Hermione knew that beneath the calm exterior there simmered a wild battle. "Please explain though." Here his voice broke. "Explain how you could...cheat on me...betray our marriage...me, who changed so much so that I could be the man you wanted and needed. Tell me how that wasn't enough, explain where I went wrong." Finally losing it, he shouted, "TELL ME!"

Once again, Hermione was struck by just how deeply she had messed up. His reaction was proving to her just how seriously she had misjudged. She had mistook his quietness and long hours at work for detachment and indifference. She carefully tried to put those thoughts into words.

"Draco, I royally screwed up. You haven't been home lately. You leave early and come home late. You're never around. I—I needed someone, someone to turn to, and you weren't there. I thought that you had lost interest, that you were distancing yourself, that you didn't care. Please understand this—it really was just this one time, and it wasn't about the sex. It was about the loneliness and confusion. And I am so deeply, utterly sorry."

Draco simply stared for several long moments, trying to understand and process, and discover where along the line they had so utterly misunderstood one another. Finally, he spoke, disbelief still evident in his voice.

"How could you think for even a second that I could ever lose interest in you? You who gave me a second chance when no one else would, and who gave me a new lease on life? I've been pulling all of these extra shifts at St. Mungo's because I've been in the running for a promotion and I wanted to surprise you. I never meant to make you feel that way, and I'm sorry that I did—but why didn't you talk to me about it?"

"Because I am an idiot," Hermione said with a humourless laugh, "and because I both don't deserve you and also still find it hard to believe sometimes that we really are together. I try and I try, but sometimes, I still can't get past our history."

Draco felt as though his heart truly shattered at her words. They made him feel as though the cheating had been a paper cut compared to the staggering pain he now felt. "I think then," he whispered, "that we have an even greater problem than the cheating."

"That we do," Hermione replied. "But we also have love. And that will make the long road ahead worth it—right?"

For the third time that evening, Draco was overcome by another strong emotion, this one hitting him as hard as his shattered heart just had. He felt hope. Taking his wife's hand, he affirmed,

"Right."

It took weeks, months, of perseverance; months filled with yelling, slammed doors, mistrust, and tears. Yet the couple stuck it out, because they knew that it was a miracle that they were even together, so why couldn't they have another miracle? When they finally came out the other end, they knew that this time, they had truly stuck it out together through thick and thin, had seen the best and the worst of one-another, and yet were still together. Therefore, they knew and trusted that their love was real and that it would weather the storms of time. So when Draco Malfoy came home from work one evening after spending a day missing his wife, and wound one arm around her waist while tangling his other hand in her wild mane of curls, it was better than any fantasy he could have ever conjured.

 **Hope you enjoyed it, thanks for reading. I tried to shake things up a bit. :)**


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